march- aquamarine

i hope you all had a good month of march! its about over now. i though id make a little collection on polyvore.com celebrating the month of march and the birthstone aquamarine.

did you do anything fun this month? i really wanted to fly a kite but its been too cold lately. :( maybe in april! :)

april showers raindrop curtain

last spring i saw the lovely handmade paper garlands and curtains by the etsy seller kategreiner. i was inspired to make my own april shower paper curtain back then, but never got around to it. reading a post on elsie's blog, a beautiful mess, about her shop decor, i was really inspired to get off my butt and make something.

sorry- these pictures arent the best. :-/ but i wanted to show you the process so you can make your own if you wish. this looks much better in real life. :-P

first i found some scrap papers. in this case i used a small pacsun bag and a few pages from a free people catalog. i chose a color palette of white, aqua, and seafoam green, and randomly brushed it on the papers. i wanted to make sure all my raondrops had the same colors to make them look cohesive.

while the papers were drying, i hung up the strings, spacing them about 4 inches apart. i used cotton yarn, but any yarn or thick sting works. i taped them upside down first, then went over them again with one long piece of tape. this gave it strength and made it look a little more clean. (uum.. i dont have trim around my windows yet.. we got a good deal on this house because it needed a lot of work.. the to-do-list is very slowly getting checked off..)

once the papers dry, fold and cut out little teardrops the way you cut out hearts for velentines- this ensures your ends all match up and stay clean-looking.

then all you have to do is glue them to the strings. i tried to spread them out pretty good at first, just in case i ran out of rain drops. but i ended up having a few extra and a full curtain of drops. :)

hehe i think its pretty cute :) a fun little springs craft that took less than an hour to make. awesome. :D

spring decorating- a little late

lately its been hard for me to get motivated to do stuff. like decorating. usually, id be all excited about it and usually i decorate for the changing seasons early (thats what happens when you work retail, and you always have next season's merchandise out now) anyway i was a little late with the spring decorating. i think i got in the mood to switch up the top of my craft cabinets (something ive been meaning to do for a while) after i went to meijer and saw these ADORABLE succulent plants! arent they cute?? ive been wanting succulents forever, since i was inspired by a picture in the anthropologie catalog for march, of a girl in a fancy cream dress tending to her houseplants. and i think i may go back and get some more cacti. they were pretty cute. (this one came from ikea for $3.99 like a year ago and the succulents from meijer were $2.25 and i bought 4) at school today, i walked by the greenhouse and saw cacti, and i squeeled out loud and ran up and basically pressed my face to the window. yeah, i think i have a crush on cacti.